Nice article from Alan Schwarz in The New York Times related to OPS and the proper weighting of its elements. Schwarz cites the work of Victor Wang published in the August 2006 issue of SABR's By The Numbers newsletter. His article...

The OBP/SLG Ratio: What Does History Say?

The correct relative contribution of OBP and SLG in "OPS-type" statistics has been the subject of some discussion recently. Here, the author checks historical team run records to see which ratio gives the closest correlation to runs scored.

There has been much debate and research in the past issues of By the Numbers about how much more valuable OBP is to SLG. Values ranging from 1.5 to even 3 have been brought up. No one, however, has actually compared the various values of OBP to SLG to the runs scored of a team. To solve this, I took the OPS and runs scored from every team since 1960. I then adjusted the OPS using the different suggested coefficients for OBP. The adjusted OPS I used were OBP weighted by 1.5, OBP weighted by 1.8, OBP weighted by 1.9, OBP weighted by 2.0, and regular OPS. These OBP weights have all been suggested in one place or another.

The results:

OBP Coefficient Correlation to R

1 0.83861.5 0.83941.8 0.84081.9 0.84072 0.8405

We can see that normal OPS has the worst correlation when compared to each adjusted OPS. The correlation keeps improving until the coefficient reaches 1.8, when it starts to decline but still has a higher correlation than with a coefficient of 1. However, the correlations remain very close to each other.

The data shows that the best coefficient to use when weighting OBP is 1.8. This was also confirmed by Tom Tango though I am unaware where his study is located. In fact, The Hardball Times currently uses a stat called "GPA," which adjusts OPS using a 1.8 coefficient for OBP and divides by 4 to make the stat on a similar scale to batting average. If anyone is interested in the complete set of data that contains all teams from 1960 and there adjusted OPS with runs scored, please contact me at the e-mail address below.

This is a subject I've written on in the past and so for those interested...

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

I receive a daily e-mail message from Baseball Prospectus, an electronic publication filled with articles and information about statistics, mostly statistics that only stats mongers can love.

To me, VORP epitomized the new-age nonsense. For the longest time, I had no idea what VORP meant and didn’t care enough to go to any great lengths to find out. I asked some colleagues whose work I respect, and they didn’t know what it meant either.

Finally, not long ago, I came across VORP spelled out. It stands for value over replacement player. How thrilling. How absurd. Value over replacement player. Don’t ask what it means. I don’t know.

I suppose that if stats mongers want to sit at their computers and play with these things all day long, that's their prerogative. But their attempt to introduce these new-age statistics into the game threatens to undermine most fans' enjoyment of baseball and the human factor therein.

People play baseball. Numbers don’t.

Talk about a lack of intellectual curiosity. Whither Chass' colleague at the Times Alan Schwarz?

To me the idea that attempting to appreciate the game on a different level somehow diminishes the enjoyment one receives from the other levels is what is truly absurd. People aren't that one-dimensional and one could certainly argue that quantitative analysis in many respects enhances our appreciation for the human element of the game by helping us see in a different way the range of human abilities that come into play and how those abilities interact with, among other things, random chance.

"a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generations grows up that is familiar with it."

Friday, February 23, 2007

In September of 2003 I authored my first post on this blog at the urging of my friend and co-worker Jon Box. In that post I noted that I chose the title "Dan Agonistes" in reference to Milton's famous poem Samson Agonistes written in 1671. Agon in Greek means "to struggle" or "wrestle" since this blog was intended to discuss my struggles or wrestling with various issues.

At the time I had intended to write mostly in my field of Information Technology with a fair dose of history, Christianity, natural science, and sports. What I quickly found in my next three posts was that I rather enjoyed writing about baseball (I did start another blog to discuss a service oriented software development project) and although I have from time to time written on other subjects the content has increasingly skewed towards baseball. Writing about the national pastime on this blog certainly helped me hone my writing skills and led directly to first writing for The Hardball Times and now Baseball Prospectus.

Well, this is now the 1,000th post (much to the mortification of my dear wife) and I have to admit that I'm a little surprised I'm still writing. Like many bloggers I think that writing about a topic helps me to think systematically and logically as well as come to opinions or conclusions on various issues. And so contrary to the notion that blogging is all about ego (it certainly is to some degree) I prefer to think that blogging is a form of self education. At least it has been for me.

Over the course of the last three and almost one half years there have been several posts that were my favorites. You'll notice that more than two hundred of those are listed on the right. But there are other posts that clearly the favorites of others, judging from the traffic reports I look at occasionally anyway. Some of those are:

The theory behind the gyroball is this: When a baseball spins sideways, like a bullet, it should cut down on the amount of resistance on its path to the plate. Without the same amount of air resistance as a regular fastball, which rotates backward, the four-seam gyroball should not experience the same slowdown and look as if it's exploding toward the plate.

A perfect gyroball should be straighter than the crease on a pair of slacks.

In an effort take baseball fans minds off of the Jeter/A-Rod soap opera, today in my column on BP I start wrapping up a series of off seson ramblings by further exploring the relationship between team age and performance in response to some excellent reader questions.

In epitome, the three-year trend in team age has some (but not very much) predictive power in terms of record, team age and payroll are more highly correlated in the free agent era, and when we apply the standard individual performance curve to teams what you find is that there is really very little correlation between the two because of the fact that older players who remain in the league are actually better than younger ones. And I even throw in an analogy from Charles Darwin and apply it to baseball...

"With all these tools at their disposal, you might expect the experts to achieve huge success rates, routinely nailing the vast majority of their projections. But various studies, done by industry leaders and outsiders alike, peg the success rate for a typical weighted three-year projection system like Marcel at about 65 percent. The goal for primo projectionists is to eke out a bit more accuracy, for a year-to-year success rate approaching 70 percent. A perfect projection system, or even something close to it, is widely considered to be impossible -- at least until stat-generating robots replace human beings at Yankee Stadium."

That's a testament to the inherent variablity in the game and in the end what draws us to it.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Today in our continuing series we'll take a look at the Yankees baserunning in 2006. As a team the Yankees finished 28th at -9.28 runs when not considering EqSBR and 21st (-9.33) when EqSBR was included. Johnny Damon came out far ahead of any other Yankee at +3.28 runs and has historically been a very good baserunner (my data goes back only since 2000).

Damon has been particularly effective in advancing on hits and fly balls and has been a break even basestealer and runner when advancing on ground outs. In 2006 he ranked 5th in EqHAR and in 2000 ranked second overall to Tom Goodwin, in 2004 he ranked 19th overall, and in 2005 ranked 7th.

On the flip side Jorge Posada has been the worst baserunner in baseball from an aggregate perspective since 2000. Here is the shortlist.

Keep in mind that these numbers are not a direct reflection of running speed but rather the intersection of running speed, judgement, and opportunities. Still, opportunities even out over the course of seven years for regular players and so there is clearly a heavy dose of running speed involved.

As far as 2007 is concerned it now appears we won't be seeing Bernie Williams and so there will be some addition by subtraction although Hideki Matsui was -0.06, -0.99, and -0.19 from 2003 through 2005 and so he's basically been a break-even runner as well. Interestingly Bobby Abreu has been consistently inconsistent and depsite turning in a good 2006 (+3.94) and 2004 (+4.16) has had other poor seasons (-3.05 in 2005, -3.48 in 2003, and -3.42 in 2000). The primary difference appears to be how well he's done in EqAAR which is inherently more variable.

A Casebook Comment to Rule 6.05(a) has been added to the rules to prohibit fielders from catching a ball in the dugout or other out-of-play area. Fielders may no longer enter the dugout to make a catch. Fielders may still reach into the dugout to make a catch but they may no longer step into the dugout to do so.

Specifically the rule states that fielders "must have one or both feet on or over the playing surface and neither foot on the ground inside the dugout or in any other out-of-play area." Seems obvious. A fielder shouldn't be allowed to record an out while not on the field of play.

One base, if a fielder deliberately touches a pitched ball with his cap, mask or any part of his uniform detached from its proper place on his person. The ball is in play, and the award is made rom the position of the runner at the time the ball was touched.

This codifies the existing interpretation.

A new Casebook Comment provides that a pitcher is not required to come to a complete stop when sing the set position with no runners on base. However, the Casebook Comment provides for the mpire to declare a quick pitch if, in the umpire’s judgment, the pitcher delivers the ball in a deliberate effort to catch the batter off guard (for which the penalty is a ball when no runners are on base).

This also seems like a codification of what the normal practice has been.

There were also scoring rule changes (section 10.00 of the rules) made, a summary of which can be found here. One of the interesting changes is that the wording in rules 10.09(b) (not 10.08(b) as the document says) has been changed so that a batter will be awarded a hit on a sac bunt if "ordinary effort" rather than a "perfect play" would have retired him had the fielder not chosen to try and put out another runner.

There is also now a possibly wider definition of defensive indifference covered under rule 10.08(g) (and not under 10.07(g) as the document says). Under the old rule "No stolen base shall be scored when a runner advances solely because of the defensive team’s indifference to his advance. Score as a fielder’s choice." Under the new rule the scorer is instructed to take into account the "totality" of the circumstances. This could be interpreted as including when a catcher and/or pitcher simply seem unconcerned with the runner and even when a half-hearted play is actually made on the runner. It'll be interesting to see how scorers use the new wording.

In other changes:

Added requirement that relief pitcher must be credited with at least 1/3 of an inning pitched. (Rule 10.19(c))

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Time between pitches: The allotment for delivering the ball with no one on base has been reduced, from 20 seconds to 12. The price for each violation is a ball.

It'll be interesting to see if this is actually enforced. I can't imagine it will in any but the most egregious cases since it'll be difficult to implement the timing. Still, a nice idea.

Batter's box presence: Conversely, an automatic strike will be assessed each time a batter violates the rule requiring they keep one foot in the batter's box throughout his at-bat, except for certain game-play conditions -- during which he is still not allowed to leave the dirt area surrounding the plate.

Now this one is more interesting and is easily enforceable since it will be visible to everyone. The wiggle room is obviously in the "certain game-play conditions".

Ball scuffing: Rule 3.02 now calls for an automatic 10-game suspension for any player who intentionally defaces the ball. (Previously, a first offense led to the pitch being called a ball, a warning to the pitcher and an announcement of violation.)

Wow. This one certainly has some teeth to it and will undoubtedly lead to appeals if a player is so punished.

No reason for rosin: The same Rule 3.02 now specifically prohibits placing "soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sandpaper, emery paper or other foreign substance" on the ball. The rule's penalty phase dictates, "The umpire shall demand the ball and remove the offender from the game. In addition, the offender shall be suspended automatically for 10 games."

Same as above - could this be in response to "Gamblergate" in the 2006 World Series?

Gender objectivity: The rulebook now includes the disclaimer that references "to 'he,' 'him' or 'his' shall be deemed to be a reference to 'she,' 'her' or 'hers'" where applicable.

I'm curious as to just how many places in the rule book this might apply to?

Update: Interesting comments from Nate Silver on BP Unfiltered. I especially liked "I watched parts of the first inning of Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, trying to time the break between pitches under this definition (this is harder than you’d think, since FOX was usually more inclined to show a close-up of Roger Clemens' flaring nostrils than the batter getting ready for the pitch)." Amen. See this column. And as Nate points out the variability in time between pitches if often the result of the batter and not the pitcher and so the rule about keeping one foot in the box will likely make a bigger difference.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Nice article this morning by John Walsh on outfield arms over at THT. For Rockies fans it should be nice to see both Willy Taveras and Brad Hawpe in the upper right hand quadrant of his scatter plot (note to John, keep the scatter plots coming as we really really like them). Hawpe's defense and particularly his throwing arm have been one of the better kept secrets in baseball the past several seasons.

This also ties in with a comment I heard Assistant GM for the Rockies Bill Geivett make on the Denver sports talk radio station yesterday. In talking about the Jason Jennings trade he first discussed Taveras' defense and especially his throwing arm as an asset in the large outfield spaces of Coors Field.

In my column today on BP I discuss the aging of teams and how that might relate, in the big picture anyway, to winning games on the field. In that column I showed an example of the Detroit Tigers from 1980 through 2006 and how team age tracked with winning percentage to a certain degree.

I thought it would also be interesting to take a look at the Cubs and so the graph below tracks the Normalized Weighted Age or NWA (defined as the weighted age of the team divided by the mean weighted age for the league and year where weighted age is calculated by weighting plate appearances and innings pitched and then multiplying the position player age by .6 and the pitcher age by .4) and winning percentage by year.

What's interesting here of course is that as the Cubs teams of the late 1960s with Ron Santo, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins matured they improved. In the 1970s the team age fell to around league average and the record hovered just under .500. As the 1980s dawned the team initially got younger before Dallas Green brought in a set of veterans (Larry Bowa, Ron Cey, Gary Matthews, Dennis Eckersley) that took them to a .596 winning percentage in 1984.

That team as well was on its last gasps and quickly crashed although they restocked with veterans Eric Young, Matt Stairs, and Jon Lieber to remain respectable in 2001. The young pitchers combined with a good mix of veteran and young positions players had the Cubs in the "sweet spot" in 2003 and 2004 although they did not capitalize. The last several years are more painful but obviously the team has gotten younger (especially on the mound in 2006) and performed poorly.

Given the massive free agent spending this winter the NWA for 2007 will likely rise to the 1.2-1.5 range and Cubs fans anyway, expect the winning percentage to rise as well.

Moore expressed his belief that the success of a baseball player depends mostly upon his moral character. He mentioned that there were several players in Kansas City that he felt did not have the character needed to be successful, and those players are now gone. (Affeldt? Burgos?)

And then a question...

Q: What will happen with Mark Teahen?

A: Teahen will ultimately play the outfield. He could play third or DH to spell other players, but ultimately, he will be an outfielder.

And the answer to another question related to Zack Greinke but not specifically related to him it didn't seem...

We're finding that a lot of our players come from broken homes, and who have never really learned wrong from right. They are immature and don't know how to handle being on their own. We've created a new Character and Leadership Program in the minors to help teach players these things. We discuss things like "how did Jackie Robinson react, and how would you react?" We hope to give these kids some direction and develop them into strong young men with character.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Interview with Steve Stone - Will Carroll has a great long form interview with Stone on BP today. I was particularly interested in Stone's description of why it is he often "first guessed" managers and players rather than waiting to second guess or simply not taking the chance of being wrong. Like Will, I grew up watching and listening to Stone and continue to think he is among the best announcers in the game. It's strange that he doesn't have a regular broadcasting gig for the upcoming season.

Josh Hamilton - A very well-written piece on the Devil Rays former first round draft choice who was drafted by the Cubs in the rule 5 draft and then sold to the Reds. It will be interesting to see what Hamilton has left after eight surgeries and the punishment he's inflicted on himself in the way of drugs and alcohol.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

JK (Boston): Hey Dan - I know he hasn't been flashy with his moves - but is there a GM that has done a better job of positioning his team for the future while also putting together a competitive team for 2007 than Josh Byrnes? The D-backs have youth and talent at every position and even with some of the back-ups (Callaspo and Hairston) - he's also collected three average/slightly above average starters capable of 200 IP's over the last 8 months without giving up a Grade A prospect and without a nausiating long-term contract. I know Rizzo and Garigiola are responsible for most of the prospects...but Byrnes has done everything he should since taking over.

I couldn't really disagree with JK and so along with their fancy new uniforms this got me to thinking about the youth of the Diamondbacks and how that translates into good baserunning.

As you can see the relationship is fairly strong at an individual level with a correlation coefficient of .74 and so you would expect that young teams would generally do well in the overall baserunning. That's not always the case, however. Florida did finish second in overall baserunning at +8.88 runs (not considering EqSBR) and were also the youngest team in terms of their position players at 25.82 years (weighted by plate appearances). But other young teams included Tampa Bay at 27.78 who finished 21st in baserunning and Atlanta (27.87) who finished 24th. The D'Backs were in fact not a young team in 2006 and were 20th in terms of age of position players at 30.19 years. Of course they'll be getting younger with the departure of Luis Gonzalez to Los Angeles and Craig Counsell to Milwaukee.

In any case it would appear that Orlando Hudson (pictured above) and Stephen Drew along with Eric Brynes are in place to each pick up a few runs on the basepaths for the Snakes in 2007.

Ricciardi also had the best line of the day when asked about clutch hitting. He talked about how there are players who don't panic in certain situations, who can "slow the game down." He mentioned how David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez were like that and added, "I've known Manny since he was 15, and I don't think he knows the game is on the line." The Boston crowd loved it.

I also found his description of this company pretty interesting. I wonder how much Cubs tickets to the World Series will go for? The site currently does not have baseball but apparently it will be coming soon...

Saturday, February 10, 2007

This morning I had an excellent time attending, along with 27 other members, the annual "Hot Stove" meeting of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of SABR hosted at Breckenridge Brewery right across the street from Coors Field. Before the meeting got under way a door drive consisting of MP3s of game 5 of the 1948 World Series were given away. Needless to say I didn't win and after treasurer Paul Parker noted the passings of Lew Burdette, Steve Barber, and Hank Bauer over the past few days the main program got under way.

Next, Parker introduced Beverly Coleman and Mary Leisring who now chair the Activities committee for the chapter and who have planned several events including our annual banquet which will be held at Coors Field this season in the visitors clubhouse, a trip to see the Rockies minor league affiliate in Casper Wyoming on July 14-15, and a trip to see the Sky Sox play here in Colorado Springs at some point in the season. Tom Virdon then spoke about organizing a trip to the annual SABR convention in July with a possible stop off in Kansas City where the Yankees will be playing directly before the convention. Tom is also a veteran of attending baseball tours and handed out literature that looks very interesting. Discussion of these and other chapter related topics can also be found on the message board.

After Atkison spoke Parker introduced the primary subject of the meeting - the humidor. Relating information from the "environmental chamber's" (as the Rockies prefer it be called) creator, Parker mentioned the following:

The chamber can hold 400 dozen baseballs

The chamber is designed to keep the ball at the MLB specifications which dictate that it be between 5 and 5.25 ounces and 9 and 9.25 inches in circumference

The Rockies receive 4 to 5 shipments of balls per season

When the balls are received that are removed from the shipping boxes and immediately stocked in the humidor where they can remain for up to 2 months before they make it into a game

Before each game 10 to 12 dozen are removed from the chamber (possibly 4 to 5 hours before the game), rubbed in Delaware mud by the clubhouse man, and then returned to the chamber until game time.

The balls that will start the game are taken out somewhere around 20 minutes prior to the game and new balls are retrieved from the chamber during the game.

"We have contacted all 30 of the clubs, and they have all confirmed to us that they will all be storing their baseballs in a temperature-controlled facility. We`re not going to have humidors every place, but every place will be temperature controlled, and so I think there will be a very high degree of uniformity."

Apparently the majority of teams were already doing this and to me the move makes a good deal of sense. While in many places an environmental chamber may not be cost effective, certainly controlling for temperature seems like a good minimum step. Further Garagiola said that they've mandated that teams only use balls manufactured in the current year.

Next, Parker introduced Dave Dresen, who presented a synopsis of an article published in 2003 in the Professional Geographer regarding baseball at Coors Field. The article can be summarized as follows:

Although one might expect balls to travel about 10% farther at Coors per the model that Robert K. Adair used in The Physics of Baseball, balls actually travel about 6% further (using 1995-1998 data from STATS). I included some more recent data in my column on the subject of Coors Field back in June

Evidence from the meteorological devices installed at Coors during the 1997 season showed that the primary wind vector opposes balls hit to right field and helps to explain why flyballs at Coors Field don't travel as far as would be expected.

When the dimensions of ballparks are taken into account the average fly ball actually ends up closer to the wall in St. Louis (old Busch Stadium) than at Coors. Overall Coors has a 3% advantage over the other National League ballparks

As a result, it is likely that personnel (poor Rockies pitchers) coupled with the general difficulty of pitching at altitude (flatter trajectories on curve balls and pre-humidor shrinking and hardening of baseballs) are the major reason for the increase in homeruns

Finally, Walter Sylvester, who works in the Baseball Operations department for the Rockies, was introduced and opened the floor to questions from the group. In answering one question he noted that a sample of balls are tested when they come out of the chamber to ensure they still meet specifications with the ones that fail the test being used for batting practice. He also opined that he thought that eventually bats may come under the same scrutiny as baseballs and that he thought that the baseballs used in the bullpens by pitchers also come from the chamber (which makes sense since a pitcher warming up should use baseballs that are as close to those used in the game as possible).

Regarding the chamber it is his view that at the end of the day it really comes down to personnel. In fact and most interestingly, he seemed to lean more towards the position that the chamber shouldn't be used since it can and should be made to work to the Rockies advantage both on the field and psychologically (for example an ad for the firm 5280 in the visitor's clubhouse reminding the opposing teams of where they are). Although he wasn't asked about roster construction in those conditions (I did ask the question afterwards and he said he thought expanding the number of pitchers, for example, would be situational in terms of how the season was progressing) nor about the so-called hangover effect for Rockies hitters, he made the point that excellent pitchers such as Roy Halladay and Luke Hochevar have come out of Colorado and so it is possible to succeed at altitude with good players (of course the counter argument that the same rules don't apply at the high school and college levels wasn't addressed). To this comment he received a nice round of applause. He also cited the improved pitching of the Rockies in 2006 on the strength of Jason Jennings and Aaron Cook and not the chamber as most responsible for run scoring being down a bit at Coors.

In answering a question about using chambers at the minor league level he had some disparaging words for Colorado Springs calling it "the worst environment" to play baseball in. Still, he thinks there may be some advantage although the Rockies with Jeff Francis and the Dodgers with Jackson in Las Vegas have sought to avoid too many starts in those environments.

Yours truly then jumped in and asked to what the front office attributes the upturn in run scoring over the final 28 games of the 2006 season at Coors Field? The chart below tells the tale.

In answering the question Sylvester noted that he assists with arbitration cases for the Rockies in the case of Matt Holliday who looked great in September, the team attributed the higher run environment to a myriad of causes including September callups and the team being out of the race and the player's relaxed. He apparently did not see any significance in it and explicitly denied that anything was different with the chamber. In looking at trends like these over short time spans he also noted that he's a big believer in examining strength of schedule and in this case even the possibility of wind patterns that were out of ordinary. Certainly this is a small sample size and so it will be interesting to see whether Coors plays more like it did the first 53 games of 2006 (8.96 runs per game vs. the league average of 9.00) or the final 28.

There were also questions related to the signing of Matzuzaka in Boston and the inevitable Todd Helton questions related to the recent trade talks. The front office still considers Helton a big asset on offense (Sylvester is a big believer in working deep counts, drawing walks, and tiring starters and mentioned that "not making an out is very valuable") and is hoping that his conditioning program will allow him to regain some of his power this season. However, at 33 he said the organization certainly "hopes" Helton can get better but acknowledged the aging curve is working against Helton while working in favor of Garrett Atkins, Matt Holliday, and Brad Hawpe.

When asked if the shortstop and catching positions are Troy Tulowitzki's and Chris Iannetta's for the losing, he definitely agreed that they would have to play themselves out of jobs. He also sees the team doing a lot more running in 2007.

All in all an enjoyable morning in February with snow still on the ground.

Thursday, February 08, 2007

This week my column on Baseball Prospectus focuses on the trend in decrease in player weight for players who debuted in the second decade of the twentieth century. After exploring a few theories as to why this occurred I zero in on the upsurge in the number of players used during that period which resulted in younger and therefore smaller players entering the game. The following graph shows the trend.

The remainder of the article discusses some of the reasons why this upsurge occurred and I draw an analogy between the experimentation in baseball during this period and the Burgess Shale fossils.

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Yes, the Yankees have received the 2008 All-Star game. There has been some controversy about it with critics wondering whether it makes sense to host the game in a park about to close and since it is likely the Yankees will be playing in the post season which is a more fitting way to say goodbye to Yankee Stadium. To me, it makes sense to honor historic parks that are on the way out since the new parks will be eventually get their turn.

The 2007 game will be played on July 10th at AT&T Park in San Francisco and Commissioner Bud Selig announced on January 15th that Busch Stadium in St. Louis will serve as the host of the 2009 Midsummer Classic.

The following are a few notes released by MLB.com on some of the background surrounding the 2008 game.

The 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game will be the 79th Midsummer Classic.

This will be the first time in baseball history that an All-Star Game has been held in a ballpark in the final year that it will be open.

It will mark the fourth time that Yankee Stadium has played host to the All-Star Game, joining 1939, 1960 (the second ASG of the season) and 1977, and it will be the eighth Midsummer Classic staged in New York City (Polo Grounds, 1934 and 1942; Ebbets Field, 1949; and Shea Stadium, 1964).

The National League has a 2-1 advantage in the three previous All-Star Games played at Yankee Stadium, winning the last two contests. The American League won by a 3-1 score in 1939; the National League blanked the A.L. 6-0 in 1960; and the N.L. prevailed 7-5 in 1977.

The Yankees have had the most All-Star players (112) and the most total All-Star selections (349) of any other Major League Baseball franchise since the Midsummer Classic originated in 1933.

Derek Jeter is the only Yankee to be named the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player since the MVP was first given in 1962. The Yankee captain earned the honors after a 3-for-3 effort with two RBI and a run scored in the 2000 All-Star Game at Atlanta's Turner Field.

In our second installment of team running metrics I offer the Chicago Cubs. As a team the Cubs ranked 11th without EqSBR included at +2.66 runs and 9th when it was included at -2.94 runs. Essentially the Cubs did fairly well because no one did really really badly. Even their worse runner in Michal Barrett (-2.25) only cost them a couple runs while most everyone else, for example Jacque Jones at +.06, was mediocre. Of course, the team will look much different in 2007 with Alfonso Soriano in centerfield (-4.41 in 2007 near the bottom), Mark DeRosa (-1.87), and Cliff Floyd (+.15) in the outfield and with hopefully a full season from Derrek Lee at first base. I certainly wouldn't look for them to improve as the team has gotten older (they had a weighted mean age in 2006 of .98 and so were slightly younger than the average Major League team and age is correlated with doing well in these metrics).

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The chat transcript from today can be found on the BP. Thanks to everyone who participated and all the great questions.

I was having some difficulty with the chat interface (special characters caused some posting problems) and so I had a couple of answers I wanted to get to but couldn't post. In any case here was one particular question I found interesting:

maxexpos (Montreal): Hey Dan, Could you rank this year's crop of Rookie...Managers? Thanks

Here is the entire answer....

Dan Fox: To recap, here are the five rookie managers for 2007 in no particular order.

All of these guys would seem to be players managers and certainly in the case of Geren, he better be since Ken Macha was fired for supposedly not being much of a communicator. There was a nice article in USA today on these guys and I especially liked this quote:

And Gonzalez, 42, has been reading statistical books by baseball historian Bill James to get a better understanding of slumps. "Sometimes, you have to make a knee-jerk reaction, switching the lineup because a guy is 0-for-12," Gonzalez says. "The great players have a 0-for-20 or a 1-for-35. So, we've got to live with it."

How can you not be rooting for Gonzalez after that?

Washington will certainly be the most interesting to watch since he's kind of a character and is the ultra-player's manager it would seem from the comments I've heard him make this offseason. Acta and Gonzalez will probably get very long leashes since both teams are still developing. Black is also interesting in that he's a pitcher and is the only one to have never never managed in the minor leagues.

Gonzalez, Washington, and Acta were all third base coaches recently and I've (with help from fellow SABR member Neal Williams) done a little work on seeing what effect those coaches have on overall advancement on hits (a derivative of EqHAR) in the period 2000-2006. Here are their number of opportunities (the number of opps that likely would have influence over), the number of runners who were thrown out, and the number of theoretical runs above what would have been expected given the quality and quantity of the opportunities and taking into account how the runners performed relative to other opportunities that the coach was not likely an influence on.

Acta comes out on top on a per opportunity basis and ranks 29th of the 75 coaches that were looked at during the period. That said, I also discovered that there is no correlation from year to year in terms of coaches (both when they stay on the same team and when they move) and so there is probably very little to learn from this other than Acta was more fortunate and Gonzalez was not.

Monday, February 05, 2007

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at various teams and their baserunning using the metrics I've created. Starting close to home is the Rockies, who ranked 23rd in all of baseball with a -9.35 runs aggregating all four measures. If you take EqSBR out of the picture, however, they finished 9th at +3.60. The highest they finished in any single category was 6th in EqHAR at +3.91.

This offseason the Rockies have made much of getting faster and the addition of Willy Taveras should certainly help, especially in hit advancement. On the other hand Jamey Carroll (pictured left) is a pretty decent baserunner overall and his playing time looks to decrease with the signing of Kaz Matsui and the emergence of Troy Tulowitzki. Carroll was the victim of some broken hit and run plays to be sure although he also has a tendency to get picked off. In addition, the core players who get on base in Garrett Atkins, Todd Helton, Matt Holiday, and Brad Hawpe will continue to be mediocre to poor and so as a team I wouldn't look for them to improve by much.